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WAGON TRAIN by Diane Werts You wanna talk all-star cast? Let's look at the guest stars crammed into the new Wagon Train box of 32 seventh season episodes, the hit western's only year in color. Barbara Stanwyck. Carolyn Jones. Peter Falk. Richard Loo. Michael Rennie. Suzanne Pleshette. Annette Funicello. Bruce Dern. David Carradine. And Ronald Reagan. And that's only in the first ten episodes. Down the line come Joan Blondell, Rhonda Fleming, Barbara Bain, Archie Moore, Burgess Meredith, Martin Balsam, Tom Skerritt and dozens more. Takes plenty of folks to fill up these 90 minute episodes. Finally, they're showing up on authorized DVDs, though these aren't Wagon Train's early seasons with Ward Bond and Robert Horton that zoomed to the top of the Nielsens when the craze for western series was at its height. (Amazing fact: The 1958-59 season hosted 31 westerns on the three-network schedule!) This is the next-to-last 1963-64 season, which starred John McIntire, Robert Fuller and Scott (later to be Denny) Miller. The DVD prints haven't been restored, either, which is too bad, since they've faded a tad over the past 45 years and occasionally show a little wear and tear. But that's easy to overlook, just to have this feast of Wagon Train-iana on your shelf. The gift-worthy set -- and you know you need to buy something for dad -- also includes new half-hour interviews with Fuller and Miller (illustrated by clips), plus 16 new-to-DVD "classic" episodes from throughout the hourlong black-and-white years, some featuring Bond and Horton (and some of them discussed in the interviews). It's certainly a trip seeing Stanwyck read cowpokes the riot act in what feels like a tough-talking audition for The Big Valley, not to mention watching Reagan as a worried stockade captain with a wacko wife, in one of his final acting roles before running for governor of California on his way to the White House. Of course, there are also peculiar moments where you have to wonder about mid-century Hollywood's penchant for casting blue-eyed actors in brownface as Comanches. Mostly, though, it's a welcome trip back to a simpler and more leisurely era. These movie-length episodes play like plays, with a defined beginning, middle and end, and usually some sort of personal lesson or moral involving the guest stars who dominate each westward-driving tale. Despite the shoot-'em-up ambiance, and those outdoor locations, Wagon Train is fairly talky, with lengthy scenes and a sense of intimacy that make a nice change of pace from today's flashy quick-cut dramas. Two points of information. Timeless has provided no captions or subtitles on the set, which might be a dealbreaker for some folks. And the discs are packed in the world's most unwieldy foldout set, which when fully opened stretches about as wide as I am tall. But it's still a pretty good deal, when you can order it from Amazon.com (click BUY NOW) for $2.25 per extended episode. (The official release date is Nov. 11.) There's enough here to keep you watching for about as long as that 19th century wagon train took to travel west. |
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Profit The Complete Series Anchor Bay, 3 discs, $30 list price by Diane Werts Some people will do absolutely any reckless, ruthless, cutthroat thing in order to win. And we aren't even talking politics. We're talking business, and revenge, and personal spite. (No, not politics.) We're talking Profit, a gleefully dark and vicious drama of dazzling wit. Try getting all those things into a TV hit. You can't. Which is why this 1996 Fox tour de force starring Heroes mainstay Adrian Pasdar only produced eight episodes and didn't even get all those onto the air. But oh, how those few of us who caught the show loved the show, and continued to worship intensely enough to get this DVD set released. The title (anti)hero of Profit is a killer. Literally. And figuratively, as a soulless, merciless corporate climber determined to scale the heights of a powerful conglomerate so he can take it down for reasons revealed to be shockingly personal. When we say Jim Profit was so abused as a kid that he slept in a cardboard box, we kid you not. That put him into a box of another kind, from which he pursues vengeance with a single-mindedness that's chilling in a way TV rarely portrays. And he was raised by yet another box, the one on which we observe his actions, which goes a long way toward explaining why he's so slick, charming and ultimately heartless. Pasdar plays it perfectly, all of it -- the charm, the evil, the warped neediness, the preening self-satisfaction, and the devilish humor. This much darkness can only be this delightful with a spritz of tongue-in-cheek to leaven the menace, and creators David Greenwalt (Angel) and John McNamara (Fastlane) slide that into the dry narration by which Profit takes us into his confidence. A worthy adversary helps, too, and Profit has some great ones -- Lisa Zane as an equally tortured security expert who's onto his game from the get-go, Scott Paulin as an upright executive who stands in his path, Keith Szarabajka as the top-dog CEO. He's also got great conscripted accomplices, ranging from helplessly blackmailed secretary Lisa Darr to Profit's own "mom," Lisa Blount as his sex-using, substance-abusing stepmother. But we don't know about the "step" at first, which makes their initial nuzzling another moment of kinky delirium. Taking advantage of being on Fox, Profit provides those as a sub-specialty. While Pasdar outmaneuvers the men, he romances their women, doing both in as many deranged ways as possible. Yet it's never too-too, because Pasdar is so delightfully controlled. He doesn't go in for gloating, really, or pity, and certainly not soul-searching. That's what's most sinister about Profit. He's so -- well, businesslike. Dapper and witty, too, but only as a means to his twisted end. Saying anything more would be saying too much. Profit provides too much delicious discovery along the way to indulge in spoilers. The joyride costs barely $20 at Amazon.com, for a weekend's worth of yummy viewing (with a smart hour documentary and episode commentaries to put the perversity in perspective). And many happy/heartless replays thereafter. |
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Honey West The Complete Series VCI, 4 discs, $40 list price by Diane Werts Here's proof that TV DVD prayers can be answered: Honey West has finally been released! I've only been waiting decades to see Anne Francis' private eye back in her sleek black catsuit, karate-chopping the bad guys. Her 1965-66 half-hour ABC series was my holy grail, forever searched-for, seemingly unfindable. Back in the 1980s when I lived in Dallas, I actually made a pilgrimage to NYC's Museum of Television & Radio (now The Paley Center for Media) to watch their collection's one prized episode. On videotape, yet. How times have changed. Now all 30 Honey West episodes come in one slim and affordable package ($30 from Amazon) of 4 shiny discs that encapsulate all my childhood dreams and aspirations -- Honey in her hip bachelorette pad with the automatic sliding doors and the sunken bathtub. Living with Bruce, her ornery pet ocelot, and Aunt Meg, her too-cool confidant. Matching wits with blustering Sam Bolt, her dead dad's private eye partner, who insists sleuthing is no line of work for girls. (Not women. It's the Mad Men era.) But Honey just smirked her Anne Francis-mole smirk and set off on adventures anyway, in her groovy white British sports convertible -- equipped with a car phone! (So there, Joe Mannix!) She'd be garbed in that iconic catsuit, with its black spike-heeled miniboots, or maybe, if she was outwardly undercover, in some swank Nolan Miller gown and furs. Honey knew karate and judo, so she never flinched from physically corralling her criminal quarry. She was elegant, and earthy. Sexy, and smart. And armed with not just guns but more electronic gadgets than even those men from U.N.C.L.E. (Love the two-way-radio sunglasses with their pop-up antenna!) Seeing the episodes again as an adult, I'm now also struck by the intelligence that a thirtysomething Anne Francis (Forbidden Planet, Bad Day at Black Rock) brings to what might otherwise have come off as a cartoon. Some of the episode plots are fairly far out there. One half-hour puts Honey in disguise as a gypsy in a desert caravan, then zips her to a ritzy resort with an underground-bunker jail cell from which escapes a vicious attack ape! Interspecies fistfight to follow! But if the stories don't always hold up, the black-and-white show's sense of style sure does. Honey West was the first series executive-produced by the prolific Aaron Spelling (Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, Dynasty), and his glossy template is clear, with all its high fashion, high adventure and highly attractive eye-candy cast. DVD distributor VCI has done a superb job digitally mastering the video, which looks more crisp and clear than you'd expect after four decades in storage. They've added a giddy bonus, too -- original 1960s commercials and ABC network promos, in all their slow-moving, simple-minded glory. From Dippity-Do hair-setting goo to golf legend Arnold Palmer hawking cigarettes by puffing away on the green, the ads unreel by the dozen on every disc. Honey West is ultimately a time trip back to an era when cigarette commercials were ubiquitous and empowered women were the rarity -- a backwards world. Now tobacco is the oddity and Sydney Bristow role models are everywhere. Before Alias, before even The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. and The Bionic Woman, there was Honey West, fast-forwarding toward the future. And looking fabulous doing it. |
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Lateline The Complete Series by Diane Werts He could be the only U.S. senator who's starred in his own sitcom. Al Franken isn't just a former Saturday Night Live scribe, Stuart Saves His Family star, and agitprop book author. Minnesota's current Democratic Senate candidate also created and played the lead in NBC's 1998 prime time comedy Lateline. Where else could you see real-life politicos Dick Gephardt and Robert Reich warbling Buddy Hackett's Music Man ditty Shipoopi? An in-joke parody of ABC's Nightline, with a splash of Sports Night, the show didn't last long, and its quality was uneven. But the idea was coolly smart -- Franken as a haplessly "serious" news correspondent for a late-night report that hosted cameos from current events characters like the two mentioned above and larger-than-life G. Gordon Liddy, who seemed to be playing someone playing himself. Not to mention veteran comic Hackett, playing himself, practically having a coronary after the show reports an internet rumor that he'd died. And Paul Simon. And Conan O'Brien. Franken's policy wonk Al Freundlich (Froynd-lick) worked with a top-notch crew, too, at least in terms of real-life TV talent -- Megyn Price (Rules of Engagement) as his loyal producer, Miguel Ferrer (Crossing Jordan) as his frustrated boss, Robert Foxworth as the (what else?) arrogantly preening anchor. Sanaa Lathan broke through as a too-cool guest booker before segueing to movies like Love & Basketball (and tube twists like Nip/Tuck). None of their characters could control the dweebish Freundlich, who in true sitcom fashion was forever getting himself into reportorial scrapes like getting clobbered by a car airbag. Maybe that was the problem. Lateline seemed too sitcom-ish for political satire and too wonk-ish for time-killing comedy. Despite the smarts of Franken and series partner John Markus, who'd worked on The Larry Sanders Show, their joint project never achieved that HBO fave's neo-realistic tone. Not that a broadcast network sitcom airing alongside Friends and Seinfeld ever could. Lateline remains worth a look, though, as a true curio of an era when sitcoms were starting to lose steam and the networks were trying anything to find the next something. They're still trying. |
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Mad Men The Complete First Season by David Bianculli Lionsgate's first-season DVD set of Mad Men, AMC's first, fabulous weekly drama series, is out now -- and if there's one thing that will make this long, hot summer of TV doldrums more tolerable, this is it... Mad Men is set at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in 1960 -- when men were chauvinists, women wore bullet bras, and everyone smoked like the chimney tops in Mary Poppins. Three-martini lunches were common. So were office affairs, ambitious jockeying for position, and secrets. Lots of secrets. Matthew Weiner, a talented writer on The Sopranos, created this series, and started out by getting the cast and look exactly right. Jon Hamm stars as Don Draper, a dashing ad exec with a beautiful blonde wife (January Jones as Betty), more than one woman in his peripheral orbit, and some deep, dark secrets in his distant past. He and his new secretary, Elisabeth Moss as Peggy, are at the core of Mad Men, but it's populated by an office full of captivating characters. There's John Slattery from Desperate Housewives as Don's boss, Roger Sterling, and Vincent Kartheiser (the wayward son on Angel) as Don's office nemesis, Pete Campbell. Most arrestingly of all, there's Christina Hendricks as Joan, the woman who rules the office using a variety of ploys and weapons -- sex appeal being no small part of her arsenal. At least a half dozen other actors and characters also shine in this series, which captures, with delicious wit and delightful details, 1960 in all its glory and folly, up to and including the Nixon-Kennedy presidential election. The grace notes, throwaway lines and period-perfect props all add to the fun. If you're old enough, you may gasp with recognition, seeing once again items you'd long forgotten -- aluminum beer cans that you pierce with sharp-pointed openers, IBM electric typewriters with unwieldy plastic covers, plastic transistor radios. And if you're too young to remember them, you're the right age to be amused and fascinated by them. After an overly obvious pilot episode, Mad Men evolves quickly into a brilliant, subtle TV show, a multilayered character study and an incisive social commentary all at once. Weiner has created a wonderful window into the past, and watching Mad Men on DVD is the ultimate way to enjoy it. Mix some martinis, sit back... and wallow. |
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Californication The Complete First Season by David Bianculli Showtime's cable and satellite network reaches about 15 million subscribers, which means the vast majority of America hasn't seen its programming firsthand. That's why secondhand, which means DVD releases, is so meaningful -- and why this new DVD release of the first season of Californication is such good news. Californication stars David Duchovny as Hank Moody, a New York writer who encounters both success and failure after moving to Los Angeles -- success by having his novel sold and adapted into a hit movie, and failure by subsequently enduring writer's block and the failure of his long-term romantic relationship. Natascha McElhone co-stars as Karen, the woman who got away, young Madeleine Martin plays their daughter Becca, Madeline Zima plays Mia, a very young woman who seduces Hank with ulterior motives, and Evan Handler from Sex and the City plays Hank's literary agent and best friend. What's delightful about this series, which premiered last year, is how it manages to be so mature and so immature simultaneously. Hank, at the start of the series, is a self-loathing hedonist, going from bed to bed and woman to woman -- but he's capable of true love, because he adores his daughter (it's mutual), and wants nothing more than to get back with Karen. Problem is, she's engaged to another man. Over the course of the first season, Hank's path to redemption, and to rediscover his muse, takes him (and us) on a fairly wild ride. Situations that seem outlandish, presented only for shock value, are built upon so that their repercussions are fully explored. That includes romantic conquests, one-night stands, office flirtations and parental boundaries. Californication is one of the series, like Dexter, that has redefined and reinvigorated Showtime, propelling it out of HBO's shadow and making it a major creative force in its own right.
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Saturday Night Live The Complete Third Season by Diane Werts Buried with a donkey/He's my favorite honky/King Tut. We are twowildandcrazyguys! La Dolce Gilda. Yes, it was a very good year. Saturday Night Live in 1977-78 still had its original troupe intact (if you count Bill Murray replacing Chevy Chase) and still had a certifiably underground sensibility, before it morphed into the corporate "institution" of today. The counterculture kids were still running loose on live TV after the grownups went to bed. The Aykroyd/Belushi/Radner cast axis welcomed such varied guest hosts as Michael Palin, Madeline Kahn, Hugh Hefner and, oh my looking back now, O.J. Simpson. (Not to mention an elderly woman as "anyone can host" contest winner.) True rebellion was embodied by punker Elvis Costello, refusing to perform what he'd been told and defiantly changing song in mid-strum. Aykroyd and Belushi's soulful Blues Brothers broke a sweat in a burst of grassroots cool rather than corporate cashing-in. The show's sketch writers weren't so much trying to impact the zeitgeist then as to amuse themselves, in such delirious flights of fancy as Belushi's ubiquitous grunting samurai ("Samurai Night Fever") and Aykroyd's oily adult TV show exploitation-meister E. Buzz Miller. And The Coneheads? What were those writers smoking? (Tell-all books about those early years do tell.) There's more, much more -- Andy Kaufman, Mr. Bill, Meat Loaf, Ray Charles, Father Guido Sarducci, et al. But you don't wanna read about it here. Go. Watch. |
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Hiya Kids! A 50's Saturday Morning Box by Diane Werts How perverse WERE the 1950s? Get a load of these kiddie shows. Hosts whose attitudes would probably get them run through criminal databases today. Shrieking studio audiences of tots clearly mainlining sugar before the show. Unbridled, unapologetic product shillery. The innocent days? They're now, people! These folks were sick. This 4-disc set of 21 vintage children's series is an eye-opening -- and eye-rolling -- time trip back to decidedly un-PC days. And, too often, excruciatingly dull days. Don't get me wrong. I love Shout Factory for lovingly collecting and releasing these relics, which I would not expunge from my DVD library on pain of death. (Or having to watch The Bachelorette. Well, maybe, threatened with that.) In fact, any tubehead worth her or his salt is fairly required to watch all four discs, just to be completely educated on this dark yet strangely giddy era from the tube's early days. Beyond the expected titles -- Howdy Doody, Roy Rogers, Sky King and Kukla, Fran & Ollie -- the set collects some near-forgotten rarities that will in centuries to come be studied as artifacts of an utterly demented culture. It's now clear why '60s hippies did drugs. They were trying to recreate the cosmic visions of these delirious video transmissions from their '50s childhood. Take Andy's Gang, a bizarre amalgam -- nay, hallucinatory kaleidoscope -- of puppetry, book reading, studio audience hysteria and live-action tales filled with pale white folks playing "how" and "wampum" Indians. (We called Native Americans that then.) Host Andy Devine -- the squealy- voiced character actor from hundreds of westerns -- seems to be a sort of disembodied presence, almost a hologram floating in and out of the proceedings, sometimes dancing a jig while a talking orangutan plays harmonica. And then there's the frog-puppet command "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!" Entirely inexplicable. Or The Magic Clown. This is a half-hour studio ad for Bonomo's Turkish Taffy, interrupted by snippets of magic tricks, as the child audience- in-a-box (each wearing a fez) contently munches in the background throughout, to the delight of dentists everywhere. Or The Pinky Lee Show. This organ-accompanied collection of vaudeville sketches featuring the title imp is actually pretty clever, as he interacts engagingly with the kid crowd amid parodies of current shows like Dragnet. Could've done without those blackface marionettes, though. Time for Beany may be the most inspired, sprung from the mind of Warner Bros. cartoonist Bob Clampett and featuring the vocal madness of humorist Stan Freberg and animation voice master Daws Butler. Though it's a simple puppets-before-painted-backdrop staging, its tale of globetrotting adventures stops in locations like Tim Buck Tooth. The MAD magazine crowd felt right at home. Oh, man, there's soooo much more, but who can handle more than three or four of these way-out phantasms at a time? Buy the set. Then ration yourself. We cannot be responsible for what happens to your brain on Hiya, Kids!! shows! |
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The Best of The Colbert Report Okay so maybe Stephen Colbert is not going to run for President after all. But at least we have this single-disc "Best of" sampler to imagine what might have been. The star of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report is in fine, funny form here, and the selections - culled from various episodes, cherrypicked to present concentrated doses of Colbert's cleverly skewed comedy and commentary. It's great to watch the opening of the very first show, for example, and realize in retrospect how fully realized his vision was from the start. Show #1 introduced the word "truthiness," which actually entered the vernacular as a result. And if nothing else, this disc includes some very memorable guest appearances, including a Ben & Jerry's ice-cream duel between Colbert and Willie Nelson (both of whom had flavors named after them), and a post-Emmys show in which Colbert is angry at Barry Manilow for "stealing" his award. Before those segments are over, Colbert sings with them both. The most outrageous guest on the package, though, is an unlikely one: Jane Fonda, featured in a pair of appearances. In the first, she's there, along with fellow feminist Gloria Steinem, to promote a radio network for women. In the second, she's there to promote her movie, Georgia Rules. In the first, Colbert undercuts the seriousness of the interview by moving it to a kitchen set, for a segment called "Cooking with Feminists." Wearing a "Kiss the Cook" apron, he chats to Fonda and Steinem while getting them to help him prepare an apple pie. Fonda, though, takes the upper hand, and flusters Colbert visibly, by taking the advice of his apron and kissing him, more than once. Then, on her second, solo appearance, Fonda takes charge again, by moving from her side of the table as Colbert begins the interview. She sits on his lap, plants a big kiss on him, and begins nuzzling his ear and talking about his soft lips. If that's not worth the price of a DVD, I don't know what is. |
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Seinfeld - The Complete Series If you've bought all the individual seasons of Seinfeld to this point, getting the stand-alone ninth-season set, to complete the collection, makes a lot more sense. What you'll be missing, basically: a beautiful, exclusive coffee-table Seinfeld book (it doesn't unfold into a coffee table, but it's still impressive), and the new jewel in the crown: a one-hour chat reuniting all four series stars with Seinfeld co-creator Larry David. A sampler of the conversation is included in the season nine set, but only Seinfeld - The Complete Series has the complete reunion chat. It's lots of fun, more like eavesdropping than watching an in-studio filmed conversation - and Jerry Seinfeld sets up the whole thing with a monologue, about Seinfeld, that proves the guy still knows how to write, and deliver, a monologue. What this set is about, really, however, is the show itself. All 180 episodes are here, from the Seinfeld Chronicles pilot (which began with Seinfeld's Jerry and Jason Alexander's George arguing about the proper placement of shirt buttons) to the hugely popular finale (which ended with Jerry and George arguing about... the proper placement of shirt buttons). No hugging, no learning, all the way to the end. Seinfeld is one of the best, most influential sitcoms ever made. It holds up extremely well to repeated viewings, and appeals to a wide range of viewers and ages. Home libraries have only so much room for mega-DVD sets such as this one, and price is at least as major a consideration - though hefty discounts are easy to find. But really: If you're only going to collect, or give as gifts, the very best, Seinfeld - The Complete Series belongs way up there on that list. |
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The Singing Detective The idea of "Classics to Consider" is to suggest TV shows that have been out on DVD for a while, but may have escaped your notice - and are perfect to seek out for those "nothing-to-watch" rainy days (or, if you don't have cable, summers). In that spirit, the very first, and best, such buried treasure to offer here is Dennis Potter's 1986 BBC masterpiece, The Singing Detective. Over the years, from the quickly failed Cop Rock to the instantly failed Viva Laughlin, TV shows have tried to emulate Potter's success at mounting a "drama with music," as he called it. None has come close, not even remotely. Potter came closest, with his own previous Pennies from Heaven miniseries. Please don't confuse the long-form TV versions of Pennies, or Detective, with their pallid big-screen counterparts. The movies don't work; the TV shows never miss. That's because, like novels, they take full advantage of the time and space given to explore themes and characters. But unlike a novel, The Singing Detective plays with image, music, and so many other tricks that it's a pure television creation. It weaves a handful of story threads into one twisting, turning, amazing arc, like a double-helix DNA strand, only tripled. Michael Gambon stars as pulp novelist and hospital patient Philip Marlow, and... well, see for yourself. Please. My enthusiasm for The Singing Detective is so great that I wrote the liner notes for the DVD - and no, I don't make any money off any sale, not unless you click and order it here. I just feel like everyone who cares about quality TV should see this masterpiece. Amazingly, it has never been televised in the United States on any national network - neither on PBS nor on cable - and was shown, back in 1987 and 1988 and repeated a few years later, only by public TV stations on an ad hoc mini-network. If you go to the FRESH AIR FAVORITES page, you can find and hear my original Fresh Air review of The Singing Detective. Or you can just trust me and order it now. As I wrote in the DVD liner notes: "If this is your first exposure to The Singing Detective, prepare to be blown away." |
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